Download or read book The Vanishing written by Janine di Giovanni and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vanishing reveals the plight and possible extinction of Christian communities across Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine after 2,000 years in their historical homeland. Some of the countries that first nurtured and characterized Christianity - along the North African Coast, on the Euphrates and across the Middle East and Arabia - are the ones in which it is likely to first go extinct. Christians are already vanishing. We are past the tipping point, now tilted toward the end of Christianity in its historical homeland. Christians have fled the lands where their prophets wandered, where Jesus Christ preached, where the great Doctors and hierarchs of the early church established the doctrinal norms that would last millennia. From Syria to Egypt, the cities of northern Iraq to the Gaza Strip, ancient communities, the birthplaces of prophets and saints, are losing any living connection to the religion that once was such a characteristic feature of their social and cultural lives. In The Vanishing, Janine di Giovanni has combined astonishing journalistic work to discover the last traces of small, hardy communities that have become wisely fearful of outsiders and where ancient rituals are quietly preserved amid 360 degree threats. Di Giovanni's riveting personal stories and her conception of faith and hope are intertwined throughout the chapters. The book is a unique act of pre-archeology: the last chance to visit the living religion before all that will be left are the stones of the past.
Download or read book Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East written by Anthony O'Mahony and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-16 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity and the home to a number of Eastern Churches with millions of followers. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the various denominations in the modern Middle East and will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars and students studying theology, history and politics.
Download or read book The Rowman Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East written by Mitri Raheb and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 711 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work represents the current and most relevant content on the studies of how Christianity has fared in the ancient home of its founder and birth. Much has been written about Christianity and how it has survived since its migration out of its homeland but this comprehensive reference work reassesses the geographic and demographic impact of the dramatic changes in this perennially combustible world region. The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East also spans the historical, socio-political and contemporary settings of the region and importantly describes the interactions that Christianity has had with other major/minor religions in the region.
Download or read book A History of Muslims Christians and Jews in the Middle East written by Heather J. Sharkey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the history of conflict and contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Ottoman Middle East prior to 1914.
Download or read book Christians and the Middle East Conflict written by Paul S Rowe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians and the Middle East Conflict deals with the relationship of Christians and Christian theology to the various conflicts in the Middle East, a topic that is often sensationalized but still insufficiently understood. Political developments over the last two decades, however, have prompted observers to rediscover and examine the central role religious motivations play in shaping public discourses. This book proceeds on the assumption that neither a focus on the eschatological nor a narrow understanding of the plight of Christians in the Middle East is sufficient. Instead, it is necessary to understand Christians in context and to explore the ways that Christian theology applies through the actions of Christians who have lived and continue to live through conflict in the region either as native inhabitants or interested foreign observers. This volume addresses issues of concern to Christians from a theological perspective, from the perspective of Christian responses to conflict throughout history, and in reflection on the contemporary realities of Christians in the Middle East. The essays in this volume combine contextual political and theological reflections written by both scholars and Christian activists and will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Religion and Middle East Studies.
Download or read book The Making of the Medieval Middle East written by Jack Tannous and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new religious history of the late antique and medieval Middle East that places ordinary Christians at the center of the story In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. Jack Tannous argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East’s history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, Tannous provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. This provocative book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.
Download or read book Christianity written by Ḥabīb Badr and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Who Are the Christians in the Middle East written by Betty Jane Bailey and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2003-03-27 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Points of interest* Presents a unique outlook on the Middle East* Relevant to current events in the world* Useful for the study of religion, politics, and other fields
Download or read book From the Holy Mountain written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving and courageous, overflowing with vivid characters and hugely topical insights into the history, spirituality and the fractured politics of the Middle East.
Download or read book Embracing the Divine written by Akram Fouad Khater and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hndiyya al-'Ujaimi, a young eighteenth-century nun whose faith was matched by her ambition and intellect, lies at the heart of this absorbing history of Middle Eastern Christianity. At the age of twenty-six, Hindiyya left her hometown of Aleppo to establish a convent in the mountains of Lebanon. Her order and her growing public profile as a visionary and living saint met with stiff opposition from Latin missionaries and with mistrust from the Vatican. Church authorities were suspicious of feminine spirituality and independent religious authority, eventually subjecting her to two Inquisitions by the Vatican. Sentenced to spend her entire life imprisoned, Hindiyya died in 1798 in her cell, leaving a legacy that shaped the church for many years to come. Compelling in its cinematic scope—resplendent with the requisite villains and mysterious events infused with sinister and sexual tensions, tragedy, and pathos—Hindiyya’s story holds within its folds a larger tale about the construction of a new Christianity in the Levant. Khater skillfully reveals what her story tells us about religious minorities in the Middle East, early modern cultural encounters between the West and the Middle East, and the relationship between gender, modernity, and religion.
Download or read book The Politics of Persecution written by President Mitri Raheb and published by . This book was released on 2021-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Persecution of Christians in the Middle East has been a recurring theme since the middle of the nineteenth century. The topic has experienced a resurgence in the last few years, especially during the Trump era. Middle Eastern Christians are often portrayed as a homogeneous, helpless group ever at the mercy of their Muslim enemies, a situation that only Western powers can remedy. The Politics of Persecution revisits this narrative with a critical eye. Mitri Raheb charts the plight of Christians in the Middle East from the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799 to the so-called Arab Spring. The book analyzes the diverse socioeconomic and political factors that led to the diminishing role and numbers of Christians in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan during the eras of Ottoman, French, and British Empires, through the eras of independence, Pan-Arabism, and Pan-Islamism, and into the current era of American empire. With an incisive exposé of the politics that lie behind alleged concerns for these persecuted Christians--and how the concept of persecution has been a tool of public diplomacy and international politics--Raheb reveals that Middle Eastern Christians have been repeatedly sacrificed on the altar of Western national interests. The West has been part of the problem for Middle Eastern Christianity and not part of the solution, from the massacre on Mount Lebanon to the rise of ISIS. The Politics of Persecution, written by a well-known Palestinian Christian theologian, provides an insider perspective on this contested region. Middle Eastern Christians survived successive empires by developing great elasticity in adjusting to changing contexts; they learned how to survive atrocities and how to resist creatively while maintaining a dynamic identity. In this light, Raheb casts the history of Middle Eastern Christians not so much as one of persecution but as one of resilience.
Download or read book Christian Martyrs Under Islam written by Christian C. Sahner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.
Download or read book Rulers Religion and Riches written by Jared Rubin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-16 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.
Download or read book Religious Minorities in the Middle East written by Anh Nga Longva and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the situation of both Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities in the Middle East, this volume offers an analysis of various strategies of resilience and accommodation from a historical as well a contemporary perspective.
Download or read book Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East written by Andrea Pacini and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with an examination of the role played by Eastern Christians in the history of Arab society, this important study offers a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the many challenges currently facing these communities. Focal points include juridical status; social, political, and economic dynamics; and relationships with the Muslim majority culture.
Download or read book The Disappearing People written by Stephen M. Rasche and published by Bombardier Books. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For 1,400 years, the Christians of the Mideast lived under a system of sustained persecution as a distinct lower class of citizens under their Muslim rulers. Despite this systemic oppression, Christianity maintained a tenuous—even sometimes prosperous—foothold in the land of its birthplace up until the past several decades. Yet today, Christianity stands on the brink of extinction in much of the Mideast. How did this happen? What role did Western foreign policy and international aid policy play? What of the role of Islam and the Christians themselves? How should history judge what happened to Christians of the Mideast and what lessons can be learned? This book examines these questions based on the firsthand accounts of those who are living it.
Download or read book Surviving Jewel written by Mitri Raheb and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Christian church was born in the Middle East and grew there for centuries. Its interaction with Islam turned Christianity in this once predominantly Christian region into a marginalized jewel, surviving at great peril within a difficult, even sometimes hostile, political and religious climate. Of course, the story of Christianity over the last 1,300 years is not solely one of conflict, marginalization, and persecution but is also about accommodation, interchange, and cooperation. This introductory book details the history of the church in its Middle Eastern birthplace through the past two thousand years. It is a story described as “a lost history” by Philip Jenkins, but it is here uncovered and placed on display. For those with eyes to see, the church of the Middle East is here revealed as a precious jewel, still catching the light.
